The Digital Lab at Novartis has a human- centric approach

At the PLA2021 Europe, we´ll have the great opportunity to discover how Novartis is approaching their digital journey. More precisely at the R&D department directly from Vijay Raju, Global Head Analytical R&D based in Basel, Switzerland.
Digital Lab: A human-centric design approach to transform ways of working
Vijay has to ensure the correct execution and meet the deliverables dates expected from his team across a broad spectrum of application from small molecules, biologicals to biosimilars. Their technical R&D key accountabilities are about creating but also innovating technical product designs and processes and supplying clinical and preclinical study materials.
Novartis aspires to build a leading medicines company, powered by advanced therapy platforms and data science. In this direction, the Technical R&D organisation within Novartis is implementing its vision for a digital lab allowing scientists to focus on real science and transforming their way of working, explain Vijay to our PLA event manager.
The presentation will provide an overview of the user centric approach pursued in engaging the scientists to understand their pain points, defining future solutions and designing the prototypes.
The overarching end-to-end design architecture and overview of some of the solutions under implementation will be presented.
The solutions include a Digital Integration Hub enabling data to become FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Introduction to the FAIR principles.
At Novartis, data as such create knowledge and provide insights enabling digital twins, predictive analytics and process automation. The presentation includes use cases that will apply these capabilities to accelerate technical development, transform knowledge management and
increase efficiency in operations will be shared.
Additionally, a very smart approach is implementing ensuring the buy-in of the laboratory users. Through a digital pilot laboratory which everyone can visualise the new processes to be implemented, they get user acceptance before full scale implementation.
In conclusion, the anticipated benefits to the scientific community and business will be outlined.

Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people’s lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world’s top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach nearly 800 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 110,000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world.
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